Children of the Revolution

Writing a historical survey poses a number of challenges for those who take up the task. What to include, and what to exclude? What are the chronological units and thematic categories that you will use to organise your material? What overall judgment (if any) do you want to make about your subject? In his new survey of nineteenth-century France, Gildea acknowledges the work of his teacher, Theodore Zeldin, whose two volumes in the Oxford History of Europe series are a fascinating compilation of essays that are both inclusive and idiosyncratic. Gildea's choices are more conventional, but his work, like that of Zeldin, is both erudite, displaying a broad and deep familiarity with the period, and full of concrete detail, particularly of sketches of individuals whose stories illuminate historical contexts and processes. Gildea opens with an introduction which describes the long nineteenth century as a continuing battle between those who supported the Revolutionary principles of 1789 and those who sought in some form a return to the ancien régime. Over five generations, the first of them born around 1760, the French were shaped by the revolutions and political crises that succeeded each other, creating a fractured political system that reached a fragile consensus only at the end of the period, with the consolidation of the Third Republic. Although the concept of generation recurs at times, Children of the Revolution is built around two chronological periods, the first dealing with the period 1799–1870, the second covering 1870–1914. These sections include thematic chapters which parallel each other, starting with politics, and then moving through a series of topics: the relationship of Paris to the provinces, class structure, religion, gender, culture, and foreign policy. Although it leads to occasional repetition, this is an effective architecture, allowing Gildea to draw extensively on the rich secondary literature in the subfields. He also uses a wide range of literary sources, novels and memoirs, and occasionally some archival material

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Battle · Consolidation (business · French revolution · Library science · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Subject (documents · Classics · Computer Science · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Law

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